The Human Body review: Keeley Hawes dazzles in brimming drama about birth of the NHS

Hollywood and hopes for a new national health service collide in Lucy Kirkwood’s ambitious new play, but a near-faultless Hawes and wonderfully debonair Jack Davenport must sometimes battle an overstuffed production

Keeley Hawes and Jack Davenport in ‘The Human Body’ (Marc Brenner)

Lucy Kirkwood is in the midst of a prolific purple patch right now. There was 2020’s weird The Welkin at the National Theatre, the slippery That Is Not Who I Am at the Royal Court in 2022, and, last year, her brilliant musical adaptation of The Witches. You never catch her doing the same thing twice, not remotely.

Does the Chimerica playwright’s latest live up to those three pieces, which showed a writer at the top of her game? Sort of. The Human Body doesn’t quite strike at the heart or mess with the head in the same way, but the problem isn’t necessarily the play itself. It’s more that it’s bogged down by an overstuffed production.

On its own terms, it’s a fabulously rich piece of writing that flings itself between two worlds. Partly it’s a pot-banging political play about the founding of the dear old NHS set in the real world where there’s suffering and politics and prolapses, and partly a dreamy drama about a Hollywood romance set to a stirring Brief Encounter-style piano score.